


Headache / Drinking - Sheith Month 2018

by Oruka



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort, Headaches & Migraines, It's shippy but they've got their priorities in order, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Sheith Month 2018, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 16:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15562275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oruka/pseuds/Oruka
Summary: Heatwave? In my exam season? Only every single year.Shiro pushes himself too hard, and gets a lesson in heatwave survival from Keith.





	Headache / Drinking - Sheith Month 2018

Hell had a name on Earth, and its name was Exam Season.

 

Why did it have to fall in the summer?

Why did it fall in the summer, in  _ Arizona? _

 

Somewhere behind the constricting pain, a few spare cells at the back of Shiro’s brain offered up,  _ at least if you’d stayed with JAXA in Sagamihara you’d be enjoying 85% humidity, too,  _ and he promptly shut those brain cells down. JAXA did amazing work. Galaxy Garrison did better. And Shiro was nothing if he wasn’t determined to be the best.

 

He’d hated that humidity as a teen. He never thought he might miss it.

 

The dorm air conditioning was down for routine maintenance. It had been planned to take only a handful of hours but a major fault had been found in the filtration system, and repairs had stretched out into a couple of days. His electric desk fan was dying in sympathy. Numbers and graphs swam and danced before him, taunting his mind, tricking his senses. He had studied for this for the last however many years. He was good at maths, he was good at astrophysics. He wasn’t good at dealing with a dry heat.

 

Finally, he gave up, leaning back in his chair with a groan, letting his pen fall from his hand.

 

“What’s got you?” asked Keith, lounging on the bed a few feet behind him.

 

“Numbers. Just… just numbers,” Shiro confessed. “I can’t read straight. The heat’s really… what time is it?”

 

“Sixteen-hundred hours,” Keith informed him, turning a page in his own textbook. “You tapped out quickly, you feeling okay?”

 

Shiro glared at the mock paper lying on his desk.

 

“Not really,” he admitted. “My head’s a brick.”

 

“There’s nothing brick-like about your head, Shiro,” Keith said with a smile that Shiro could hear, even though he couldn’t see it. “You’re far too soft.”

 

Shiro span around in his desk chair to face Keith, who smiled quietly at him from the bed.

 

“You’ll be fine on the day, Shiro, you’ve still got two weeks ahead.”

 

“Will it be autumn in two weeks?”

 

“...well, no…”

 

“I’m gonna  _ die,”  _ Shiro groaned, slumping so far down into his chair that his sweat-darkened shirt rode up his back and threatened to climb up over his head. He heard Keith chuckle as he set his book aside. Keith, who was taking an Arizona heatwave in his stride. Keith, who belonged so deeply to this hellish landscape that he could vanish into the heat haze in seconds, barely noticing even as the sun-baked ground started to melt the soles of lesser mortals’ shoes.

 

Shiro leaned forward in his chair, pushing his forelock out of his eyes. His head throbbed.

 

“Look, Shiro…” Keith moved towards him. “This is an important test, and I know you’ve been taking it seriously, because you’re, a) Shiro, and b) not me. So, being you, you’ll be fine.”

 

Shiro felt a warm pressure against his thigh as Keith slipped onto his space.

 

“You’re gonna be fine, Shiro. Hey, look at me…”

 

Shiro felt a hand smooth against his cheek and leaned into it, frowning. Keith hardly had the softest skin, but it normally afforded more comfort than this.

 

“I dunno, Keith, I’m so tired… and my head hurts.”

 

There was an evaluating noise from his friend. Normally, in this position, there would have been some sort of friction, some sort of illicit enticement, but today it seemed Keith was doing the logical thinking for both of them.

 

“Say ‘ahh’,” Keith instructed, and Shiro did so, letting Keith tilt his head back to look at his tongue. “What’ve you had to drink today?”

 

“Two coffees.”

 

“When, at breakfast?”

 

“And a bottle of water on my run.”

 

“And nothing else?”

 

Shiro tried to recall any other drinks in his recent history, but the thick pain in his head distracted him. His brow creased and he turned his head to the side, wincing.

 

“Yeah, you’re super dehydrated,” Keith announced, sliding back onto his feet. “No wonder you’re sporting a headache.”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“Sure it is. Stay put.”

 

As though Shiro was going anywhere today. Keith pulled his boots on and left the room, trailing a faint breeze behind him.

 

There were other tests coming up sooner, but the one that had Shiro nailed to his chair was the big one. For everyone in Keith’s cohort it was simply a formality. For Shiro, it was the difference between joining the elite group of outer system pilots, or remaining, as he saw it, little more than a bus driver to the inner planets. He tried to tell himself that he’d be happy enough with that, that the shorter, safer missions within the bounds of the asteroid belt would pay well and leave him with plenty of downtime, but it didn’t ring true. It would be far too domestic. Shiro knew in his bones he was born for the stars. Even if his bones were aching today.

 

He prodded the little information display on his desk until it showed the upcoming weather. Numbers in the hundreds for the next week or more, with no sign of a break in the pattern. Delightful.

 

He tried massaging his temples for a minute, but all that did was make him feel bruised on the outside as well as on his brain. Finally giving up, he slumped forwards and pillowed his head in his arms, scowling into the dark space between his forehead and the desk.

 

Keith came sweeping in a few minutes later, a slightly cooler wash of air following him through the door, and shoved a pile of Shiro’s books to the side to make space on the desk for his haul. Shiro sat up blearily, blinking in the suddenly unfamiliar light. Piled up where  _ Applied Astrophysics Grade VI _ ought to be was a large grip seal bag, full of powder and with no label, a fistful of snack bars, a selection of glass and plastic bottles, an unfamiliar knife, a can of sports soda that was sweating more than Shiro, four oranges, a new and very shiny desk fan with  _ Prof. Montgomery - Personal  _ taped to its stem, and a huge bunch of fat green grapes.

 

“Where’d you get all this?”

 

“For the sake of plausible deniability, Shiro, you don’t need to know,” Keith said in his practical tone, scooping the grey-blue powder into a glass and then filling it from the bathroom tap, stirring with the end of his pen. “It’s better for you this way. Drink this.”

 

“Why’s it purple?”

 

“Because it’s theoretically blackcurrant flavour. It’s not, so don’t get your hopes up.”

 

Shiro took a sip of it and, with some effort, resisted the urge to spit it out.

 

“You have given me  _ bathwater.” _

 

“Electrolyte water, but I know what you mean. Drain the glass.”

 

“Yes, sir…”

 

It wasn’t awful but it was unpleasant. Shiro drank the  deceitful liquid, conscious of Keith watching. Glass empty, Shiro let his displeasure wander across his face. He had already been suffering and then Keith had made him drink  _ that.  _ And now Keith was holding out a spoonful of some mystery syrup.

 

“What’s next, shampoo?”

 

The last time Keith had offered him something on a spoon it had turned out to involve scotch bonnets. The time before that, it had been the worst carrot soup in the world. Shiro frowned at it. Keith had form.

 

“Open wide, Shiro.”

 

“What’s it gonna ta--” he began, and jolted in surprise as Keith quickly pushed the spoon past his lips.

 

“It’s medicine, dummy. Liquid ibuprofen.”

 

Compared to the saline water, the sweet syrup wasn’t bad. Shiro maintained his unhappy expression but dutifully licked the spoon clean, swivelling in his chair as Keith moved around his room, refilling the empty glass with mercifully clean water, and taking up the knife to peel an orange with slightly worrying finesse, leaning against the desk so that he could hand each segment over.

 

Keith hadn’t always been like this. Less than three months ago Shiro had been down with a flu and all he’d got from Keith was an unconcerned shrug and a blank ‘you’ll live’. Early in their friendship, Keith had literally broken Shiro’s wrist in a training session and all he had said was ‘whoops’. Keith… wasn’t unkind. But he was cold.

 

At least, he had been.

 

“Hey, Keith…”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“When did you start being my mother?”

 

It was a while before Keith gave an answer, his attention focused on surgically dissecting the orange in his hands.

 

“Never had a mother,” he began, and shoved another slice into Shiro’s mouth before he could utter an apology. “Never had anyone really looking out for me since Dad died. Never had to look after anyone else, either. You changed that.”

 

He removed a segment for himself, gently peeling back its second skin to reveal the bright, shining fruit beneath.

 

“I guess I start being your mom whenever you stop being mine.”

  
  
  
  
  


Keith finally,  _ finally _ managed to get Shiro to close his books and take a shower, and by the time Shiro emerged, the room had been rearranged around the bed. Both fans pointed towards it, a stool had been dragged up close with a pitcher of water on it, and Keith was unpacking a bag of Chinese takeout.

 

“More contraband?”

 

“Chicken fried rice. Don’t ask how I got it in here.”

 

“You’re sweet,” Shiro said with a smile.

 

“There goes my reputation for being salty, then. Lie down before you fall down. And choose something or I’ll make you watch  _ John Wick _ again.”

 

They watched  _ John Wick _ anyway, with the volume low, and Shiro’s eyes were drooping long before the film even reached a middle. He slumped under the thin blanket, propped up on just enough pillows that he could convince himself he wasn’t actually resting his head against Keith’s thigh. Keith kept passing down a glass of water with a straw and making him take long sips, constantly pressing the back of his hand to Shiro’s forehead, checking his temperature.

 

“Sorry you had to do all this,” Shiro mumbled. “Should have seen it coming.”

 

“It’s nothing.”

 

“You should go back to your room soon. Don’t get in trouble.”

 

Keith made a broad gesture to the roomful of lifted items. Nothing needed to be said beyond that.

 

“Yeah. Well, thank you Keith. I appreciate your concern.”

 

“You’re welcome, Shiro.”

 

“Don’t do it again.”

 

“Yeah, right.” Keith paused. “You know I would anyway.”

 

“Yeah,” Shiro replied, closing his eyes once more, “I know you would.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When Shiro rose to consciousness again some hours later, the thin daylight told him the sun was starting to set, thank god. Their film had finished and now sat on the menu screen, looping forty seconds of heavily filtered footage over and over again. Shiro reached for the remote and closed the whole thing down.

He felt a lot better. No headache, no painful thirst. With the relative cool of the evening coming on, he might make it through another few hours of study before he finally turned in for the night.

But Keith was in his bed.

Shiro moved to turn the fans off, locked the door, flipped the lightswitch, and paused to admire Keith in a rare moment of perfect calm. The Garrison grumbled around them, machinery and personnel moving in the distance somewhere. The air vents clanked as someone nearby applied some percussive maintenance. In Shiro’s room, there was no other sound than the soft rise and fall of Keith’s breath as he dozed, fully dressed, flat out on a mattress that dwarfed him even though it was barely made for one.

Shiro’s paper would still be there in the morning. There were days to go before the exam. He’d be fine.

He’d be even better if he got some more sleep.

Feeling strangely calm in a way that he hadn’t found a name for yet, Shiro climbed back into bed and let a dreaming Keith rearrange his skinny limbs around him. The test could wait. Just for a while, it would be okay to rest.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I did write this for Sheith Month 2018... which was last month. Eh, real world problems bit my ass.  
> I combined two prompts for this one and have done so with other works, and a lot of them are written/drafted already, so I'm going to follow through with the project even if I am a whole month late with it.
> 
> If you can recommend a tag, please let me know in comments or catch me @orukamachi on tumblr. Thanks for reading!


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